The pen is mightier abroad

Expat Rhys Bowen is a mystery writer, but why her novels have never been as
popular in Britain as they are in America is an engima she can't quite
unravel.

Rhys Bowen: "I do miss certain things - sitting outside a pub with a Pimms on a summer evening, eating fish and chips out of paper, Cornish pasties, relaxed village life where nothing changes - but I believe my nostalgia is more for a time than a place."

An expat in America since her early twenties, Bowen's mystery novels have been well received in her adopted country, and earned her a clutch of awards, including the Agatha award for best novel. In Britain, however, it's a very different story.

"It's odd, of course, because most of my books are set in Britain." she says, "But when I turned to writing, I'd already moved to America, so I guess I wrote with an American audience in mind. I certainly emphasised elements of British life in them which I would have made less of a big deal about at home - the cutesy, rather cosy side of Wales, for example. I vaguely planned to rewrite the books for their publication in Britain, but the opportunity never came up. So, for one reason or another, I’m better known over here."

Bowen was born in Bath, and says that the tale of how she became an expat novelist is "convoluted, to say in the least." After studying at Westfield college, London - "in those days still a rather quaint, old fashioned ladies college" - she spent several years working in the radio drama department of the BBC, and wrote her first play at just 22. She says, however, that “eventually the British weather started getting me down" and when a job opportunity came up at the equivalent of the BBC in Australia, she took it.

Intially, Bowen imagined that her stay in Australia would be short term, but an unexpected romance with a fellow Briton soon put paid to her plans to return home. "John had been working in America before, and needed to return before his green card ran out. The only way to accompany him was to marry him - so I did, five months after our first meeting. It made for a rather chaotic wedding, as the authorities refused to issue my paperwork till after I was married. We ended up driving manically up the hill to the consul's house to pick it up in person!"

Settling in America, Bowen found to her dismay that nothing like the BBC's radio drama department existed: "Radio was all local, and either music or talk. I found myself at a loose end, and so started to write novels."

Her first book, a picture book for children, was an enormous success, and she refers to herself as having led a "rather serendipitous life" since then, though she quickly lost enthusiasm for the market she found herself writing for. “I started writing young adult novels, which were just becoming big in the 80s, and so had plenty of work. However, it became very constrictive, formulaic even, and I stopped being excited by it. The publisher would sign me up for six novels, then another two, and another two, and eventually I just snapped. I remember saying to my agent, 'I have an idea for book ten of this series. The girls get on a plane to go to Hawaii, and then it crashes. The end.' My agent looked at me and said, '"You're tired of this, aren't you?'"

After a brief stint writing historical romances and TV tie-ins, mystery novels beckoned, and the first book in Bowen's Evan Evans series, based around the exploits of a Welsh constable, was published in 1997. It was her first book to be published under the name Rhys Bowen – she had previously used her married name, Janet Quin Harkin – and signalled a new start for her as a writer. "I wanted to do something completely different, that transported you to a different place. My mother's family came from Wales, and I spent a lot of time there as a child. I was telling a friend of mine some stories about it once, and realised what a good setting it was a for a novel.

"A huge amount of the stories' background comes from my childhood. We really did have a postman who read everyone's mail - I remember him delivering my GCE results wirth a big smirk on his face. And we really did have two feuding congregations, who used to paste totally contradictory Bible quotations outside their respective churches. While I was writing those novels, I kept up with the local Welsh press, and would make a note of bizarre stories that appealed to me - though often my American editors wouldn't believe they were real!"

Writing British-based novels whilst living on the other side of the pond is, she admits, difficult, but she returns to Britain at least once a year, to see family and do any necessary research. "I re-drive routes a lot- just to make sure the bucolic locations I'm describing haven't been replaced by power stations - and you can often find me just sitting in a café or on a bus, trying to pick up the rhythms of how people speak."

Bowen's Molly Murphy mysteries, which centre around the experiences of an Irish immigrant in New York at the turn of the twentieth century, shifted her from her usual British setting, and were, she says, far more difficult to research. "I just have such gaps in my knowledge about American history, due I suppose to the fact the British simply aren't schooled in it. In my first book, Molly set foot in Manhattan, and I suddenly realised I knew nothing about where she was going next. Luckily, I've got plenty of attentive readers who are always happy to point out where I've made errors, and good copy editors too. One was particularly excellent, always saying things like 'Did the word streetlight exist in 1901?' which would send me burrowing into the Oxford English Dictionary to find out." ( It didn't, apparently.)

Did Bowen draw at all on her own experiences as an expat whist writing the Molly series? "A little, yes. Being an immigrant in that period was incredibly tough, a real fight for survival, and I can't say I identified with that. But the feelings of isolation, and of loneliness - yes, I guess I used those.

"When I arrived in America, my husband had roots there I couldn't share, and for a while, I felt as if all my social circle was made up of my his friends rather than mine. But I made efforts to meet local people - having children is a great asset in that respect- and I realised just the other day that I've been hiking with one group of women out here for nearly 20 years now. We talk incessantly - one of the group reckons we've saved a fortune on therapy."

Bowen is a diligent worker, rising early each day, and " barricading myself inside until I've written enough pages". Interestingly, she claims not to plan out her mysteries in any real detail before starting. "I could do, but then I'd just get bored. It's a bit of a cliché, but I like to let the characters take over, to follow my sleuths one step behind, rather than leading them along. I often don't know what the end will be for a long time. And quite often I'll find my characters doing completely different things to what I've intended."

Her current mystery series, the comic Her Royal Spyness novels, are set in 1930s London, and she says she still draws inspiration from people she has encountered in Britain. "The books have an aristocratic setting, and my husband's family are quite well to do, so I have to admit I do use them a lot." What do they make of that? "Well, amusingly enough, they don't seem to recognise themselves. There's one older lady in the family I'm dying to write in, but I think that one would be a bit too obvious!"

She says that much of the humour in the Spyness novels "draws from satirical British stereotypes" and that this might explain why Americans like them so much. "As an expat, your eyes become more sharpened to things which we don't notice so much at home- the rigidness of our class system, for example, and how certain words in Britain can automatically identify you as belonging to a certain class. You just don't get that so much in America. I do try to incorporate these ritish features into the books, because the readers here find them fascinating."

So would she ever consider moving back to Britain? "I don't think so, no, not permanently any rate . I would love to own a cottage and go for a month or so in the summer. Unfortunately the price of cottages, in places where I'd want one, is through the roof.

"I do miss certain things--sitting outside a pub with a Pimms on a summer evening, eating fish and chips out of paper, Cornish pasties, relaxed village life where nothing changes - but I believe my nostalgia is more for a time than a place. Luckily my sister in law has a fabulous manor house in Cornwall so I'm able to get my English country life fix almost every year, eat my clotted cream ice cream and cream teas and go home happy."

Not to mention the fact that America is of course the home of her most loyal fans. Bowen's American readers drive 200 plus miles to come to a book signing, but she recalls with amusement that when she offered to sign her books for two British women, they "looked rather aghast, as if wondering why I'd suggest such a thing." It is, you imagine, exactly the type of British attitude about which her fans love to read.